Читать книгу The Handbook of Communication Rights, Law, and Ethics - Группа авторов - Страница 33

At the time this chapter was being written, the media was broadcasting Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcement (Bienkof 2018) about the need for the United Kingdom to bring in laws to prohibit harassment of public personalities on social networks. This is not an isolated case. Throughout 2017, many political leaders and national and supranational democratic institutions – for instance, Macron in France,² the Spanish government, and the European Union (Alandete 2018) – considered placing limitations on communication in places that we could term “3.0” in order to refer to the services of the information society, especially after the explosive expansion of the social Web.

It is also worth mentioning the revolution represented by virtual currencies such as BitCoin, which is now traded on Wall Street.³ These pose a challenge to sovereign states, some of which are now demanding special security measures be put in place. This was the European Union’s response (European Commission 2017) following the exposure of computer system vulnerabilities during the massive Wannacry ransomware attack. But let us not confuse monetary or fiscal policy, which have no basis in human rights, with communication rights, which enjoy the status of basic human rights. Constant technological change creates growing uncertainty as computers’ processing speeds accelerate and algorithms that publish content on leading websites and social networks (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) become more sophisticated. These changes are altering society in a way that has legal consequences and certainly poses ethical challenges.

Recently, websites such as Facebook⁴ have made major changes to their policies, and sometimes these have gone in the opposite direction to those made in the radio and television industries. Google is also repositioning itself having created and disseminated content through Google News since 2002. These changes are coming about in response to regulation of the information ecosystem. In Spain, Google News ceased operating in 2016 after a so-called Google tax or fee for press clipping or links to newspapers was approved. Even more recently, these platforms have shifted their business strategies and sought partnerships with major news outlets – for example, through the Google AMP initiative or Facebook News. These partnerships raise questions not only about the role of social media platforms as news organizations themselves, but also about the impact that a greater level of media concentration may have on communication rights (Cetina Presuel and Martínez Sierra 2019).

Death threats have a greater impact when they are published on Twitter or Facebook than when they are printed. There is undoubtedly greater sensitivity among the public – and politicians – to websites where free expression can circulate without being detected by potential critics. “Bullying,” sometimes by “trolls” or bots, has become a dreaded threat. Such Internet activity seems more threatening than if it happened on TV or in a printed newspaper. Are threats harmful only when they travel, hidden away, through the dark corners of the Internet? No, as telephone harassment can also be a nightmare. The multiplying effect of social networks is to increase the dissemination, but not the nature, of criminal acts. Harassment, fraud, and threats are illegal acts in and of themselves, regardless of the medium or form of the message. Spanish courts have already established the concept of legal responsibility for Tweeting and reTweeting (Corredoira 2017).⁵

It seems that the universalization of communication mediated through the Internet is creating risks and potential “plagues” arising from the basic human behavior of communicating and sharing. The Internet is generalizing the right to receive and disseminate information to the many rather than the few, which is a strongly positive phenomenon, and yet sovereign states tend to be on guard because they see this as a development that leads to the emergence of potential enemies.

Along these lines, the European Union is even considering reducing anonymity on social networks and platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. The governments of France, Spain, and Portugal⁶ made this request as part of the debate that took place as the EU’s Copyright Directive (Directive 2019/790) was being debated. This request was met with considerable resistance within the sector owing to its potential to restrict communication rights on the Internet⁷ as well as offline.

As mentioned, it is important to return to the foundations of the universality of these rights and understand their basic features. These rights apply equally to private and professional individuals using digital media. This is also the case in the United States under First Amendment doctrine, as Ugland analyzes in Chapter 6 of this volume.